Cracks in the Wall
by ThePraetorLady
Summary: Collection of "snippets," little not-even-fics that I scribble when I'm bored. Set in non-uniform timelines, generally sometime in the future when Leo and Reyna are together. Pointless and plotless. Leyna.
1. Leg Cramps

_I hope you're not expecting genius here. Take the Leyna. Take it._

_Standard disclaimer, it's all Rick Riordan's._

Leo looked up in surprise from his seat on the couch as Reyna flopped down beside him and very pointedly dropped her right foot onto his stomach. "I ran farther than usual this morning," she said. "My calves have been cramping all day."

He eyed her leg, wary. He'd been tricked before. "And my responsibility for that is …?"

"Rub my leg, Hot Hands," she said with a sigh, having figured out weeks ago that his higher-than-normal body temperature made him a stellar masseur. She gestured to the upper end of her right calf: "Right here."

Leo had a healthy sense of self-preservation, but he also had a healthy sense of _Holy Hephaestus my girlfriend is gorgeous_, so he didn't argue it. She began to unravel her braid; he grinned sideways at her and took her lower leg in both hands, working at the tight muscle. She rolled her ankle and made an affirmative "hmm." Good, he was unlikely to be murdered tonight.

He worked his way down toward her ankle, but when the heel of his hand brushed her heel, she jerked away. "Not my foot," she warned him, her toes curling instinctively. It was hard to take her seriously, even though he'd found out about her ticklish spots the hard way. All the other demigods saw a serious, hardworking praetor; he saw a girl who shrieked and twisted backward whenever he squeezed her waist.

Obediently Leo moved his hands back up under her knee. He was suppressing a smile, though—he'd had an idea. He maintained his best innocent look as he skipped over her knee and curled his rough mechanic's fingers under the lowest part of her thigh.

Her braid half undone, Reyna looked up in surprise. "My hamstring is fine," she started, sounding almost a little uncertain, and that was when he pulled her toward him by the leg, knocking her from her pristine posture and half into him. In one quick motion she went from sitting upright to lying on her back, one leg stretched out across his lap and the other bent by his waist.

He leaned over her, careful not to catch her pooling hair when he set his hands by her shoulders. He was going to enjoy this rare moment of having the advantage, the upper hand. "Your running thing is hot," he said with a grin. "But really, if you wanted my hands on your legs, all you had to do was ask."

A smirk on her lips, she cocked her head and beckoned for him to come closer, so he lowered himself until barely an inch remained between them. His curls brushed against her forehead as he waited, and then:

"I did ask," she whispered, her breath hot against his ear.


	2. Lessons

_Set sometime in the future, after Leo and Reyna have actually gotten together._

Leo and Reyna crouched on the kitchen floor of her villa, Argentum lying in front of them in sleep mode, his control panel disconnected and in Leo's hand. Reyna kept one hand on the silver dog, the other on his gold brother, and both eyes on her favorite mechanic.

"You've got a pretty complex system here," he was saying, tapping one finger on its center. "Q3R-ii, fourth generation. Hard to find replacements. No wonder the Vulcan kids don't want you touching them."

"Thank you for trying to make me feel better," she said drily, giving him a small wry smile, "but I _know_ it's complex. What I _don't_ know is how to do anything with it. So maybe try moving on to that."

"Yes, ma'am, _mi reina_." He saluted, earning an eye roll, but he did at least move into less technical, more relevant territory. "So when they start doing the spitting-up-oil thing, you can put them in the kennel like normal—"

"Wow! Really?"

He gave her a mock dirty look for her wild sarcasm. "Students must raise their hands and be called on by Teacher if they have something to share with the class."

"Students, plural? Who else are you giving lessons to, Leo?" She raised her eyebrows, cocked her head, and eyed him, a small smirk playing at her lips as the possible meanings of _lessons_ registered visibly on his face. "I'm a little offended, to be honest. I thought I was your only student."

He sighed dramatically. "Nobody appreciates Doctor Professor Valdez's extensive knowledge base." He shrugged, but a grin betrayed him. "And I have all this extra time, so whenever people ask—"

"Well, in that case, I'm going to need to schedule some private tutoring sessions with the doctor professor," she decided, and the suggestive gleam in her eyes was enough to get him to set aside the control panel for a second and press his lips to hers, hot but not steaming. She couldn't help but respond, returning the pressure, slipping one hand along his jaw, smiling a little against him. Three months of dating, and he'd finally stopped asking if she liked kissing him.

But too soon she forced herself to pull away. "I still want you to show me how to do the control panel thing," she said.

Shaking his head a little like he had to remember where he was, he glanced down at the control panel and picked it back up. "Okay. I was saying . . . What was I saying?"

"Before the extended metaphor, you were telling me I could do what I've done for the last five years. I sincerely hope there was an 'or' coming after that."

"There was!" He summoned his focus—which wasn't much—and held up the panel. "_Sí, sí, sí. Vale—aquí. _Back on subject. So you can stick them in a kennel to minimize casualties, or, if you know how, you can put them to sleep—hibernation mode—the way I do when I'm going to do maintenance. And you can leave them asleep, maybe do a quick check."

She shifted closer, peering at the panel. "Okay, show me." She learned by doing, not listening.

Luckily, Leo seemed to be the same way. "Hang on." His fingers moved in a blur as he wired the control panel back into Argentum's neck. Quick, as to be expected after months of being her dogs' sole mechanic. When it was in place he did his best Vanna White impression, framing the mechanism with his hands. "This is what it should look like before and after."

"Got it," she said, even though she wanted to say _gee that's genius, it's not like I look at them every day of the week._ Leo was still working on the temperamental part of his insecurities, and she knew full well that if she offended him he might just refuse to show her what to do, and then she would be right back to square one since none of the Vulcan kids felt she knew enough to do any repairs herself. (Not that they dared to say it quite that bluntly, to her face, anyway.)

"Okay. Now here's the thing. You have to put your hands here—" He situated, his fingers around the edge of the panel, pressing in and down. "—and _keep them there_ while you unscrew the mechanized lock." He let go for a moment to dig through his tool belt pockets, pulling out several containers of breath mints before he got the tool he needed. She leaned in close enough to smell aftershave, and he began to unscrew the panel, slowly enough that she could see.

"Now here's the thing," he said again.

She cocked an eyebrow. "The other thing."

He wrinkled his nose at her. "Teacher doesn't appreciate your attitude. Anyway, the thing is, your first instinct is to just go in and yank this out, right? But you can't do that. Ever, ever. Bad things would happen, like the world would explode and pizza would cease to exist. You have to grip it tight around the corners, like this—" He demonstrated. "—and lift it up veeeeery slooooowly, just a quarter of an inch, so you can just start to see the wiring inside."

"Okay . . ." She craned her neck trying to look at it from the same angle as he was. The barest hints of blue and red wire were visible in the slit between the neck and the panel. "I see it. Now what?"

"Now you need one of these, and one of these." He pulled out unfamiliar tools from different pockets on his belt. One looked pokey, the other screwy, and Reyna was embarrassed to realize that was all she knew about them, but before she could ask what they were actually called, Leo said, "Now here, watch."

Holding the panel up with his left hand, he took the pokey tool in his right, stuck it very carefully in the far corner, and twisted it so it hooked upward. "I find the lock-in button—it's small and buttony—and I press it in until I hear it catch."

Reyna strained to hear it, but she did, an almost inaudible click.

"And now what I usually do is I hold it open with one hand and use the wire stripper to get the tungsten stranded wire."

"The what?"

"It's the silvery-blue wire."

"Oh."

Five minutes and lots of repair-boy jargon later, Leo had fixed up Argentum and supervised as Reyna performed the same maintenance on Aurum. "You did pretty well," he praised her as she wired the dog's control panel back into place and turned off sleep mode. "I should have known you'd be a good student for Doctor Professor Valdez."

_"Doctor professor,"_ she snorted, more to herself than to him. "I'm fairly certain you couldn't pay anyone to give you either of those degrees."

"_You_ learned something, didn't you?" he countered, raising his eyebrows.

She considered this, shrugged, agreed, "I did learn my favorite part of fixing the dogs."

"Which is?"

A smile played on Reyna's lips. "Kissing the mechanic," she admitted, and she ignored the wriggling dogs as she leaned in for another private lesson on this particular subject.


	3. Snacks in the Lamplight

_For Tumblr user perseusuniverse. (All these snippets originated in Tumblr.)_

"Did your electricity go out?"

Reyna looked up in surprise as Leo walked through the front door of her villa, ducking his head and squinting through the darkness. It wasn't like it was _that_ dark, anyway, the little drama king— she had only turned off the overhead lights and was now sitting peacefully in the light of a small lamp. At least, it had been peaceful up until then. She found it difficult to truly relax when her antsy boyfriend was around.

"No, the electricity is fine. Come sit." She patted the seat next to her on the couch. He looked sorely tempted, but:

"Can I— do you want me to turn on the lights?"

"Don't," she said, the warning in her tone light and nonthreatening. It was too late in the evening to deal with any dogs-maimed-another-one paperwork. "It's fine; your eyes will adjust. Just come sit down."

He did, probably because he knew better than to defy her. She looked him over, and then realized he was empty-handed. "Did you bring it?"

Leo grinned, pulling the bag of Haribo gummy bears out of his tool belt. "Appreciate me." He dangled them in front of her, but as soon as she reached for them, he pulled them out of reach.

"I appreciate you," she insisted; "now give me."

"I didn't hear you say any of the magic words," he countered, not handing it over. He liked to live dangerously, she supposed.

"How's 'I'm three inches taller than you' for magic words?"

"Ouch. Well, then, if we're hitting below the belt now …" And then she watched in stunned horror as, in the low lamplight, he _tore the bag open and ate a handful of her gummy bears_.

Reyna opened and closed her mouth, searching for words that left her. He gave her a saucy grin, his cheeks bulging with candy that was rightfully hers. This called for … diversionary tactics.

"Leo," she said, letting her voice go soft and low as she leaned forward. His face flushed a little as she let her eyes trail from his jaw to his mouth to his lovely dark eyes, and he swallowed the mouthful of gummy bears audibly.

"_R_— _reina_?"

She stopped mere inches away, her lips parting in a sigh. Eyes half closed, looking up at him from under her long lashes, she breathed, "_Da__melo_," _give it to me,_ and in a burst of movement she snatched the bag away and plopped back into her original position, a smug smile on her face.

It took Leo a moment to move his hand and realize his prize wasn't there anymore. "That's cheating," he protested. "Really bad cheating."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, it was spectacular cheating," she said, popping a gummy bear in her mouth. But he was still pouting, so after she swallowed she leaned forward again and gave him a proper kiss, warm on the lips. And she appreciated that the little lamp was the only light to see by, because her face heated up considerably when she smelled his hair smoking and felt his hand in her hair as he kissed her back.


	4. Translation Work

_For Tumblr user Bronnie/missionfabulous, whose idea spawned this. T__akes place a while after Gaea's been defeated and the Greek and Roman camps have become friends._

Leo and Jason sat on top of a picnic table, enjoying the mild weather and lack of save-the-world wars. Demigods both Greek and Roman wandered the grounds of Camp Half-Blood in clusters of two or three, but most of them were hitting up the lake, so for all intents and purposes they were alone there on the lawn. What had started out as Doing Nothing had just become potentially Doing Something: Jason had confessed he wanted to learn a little Spanish.

"Why Spanish?" Not that Leo was complaining; he was just curious why the former praetor and current head counselor of the (granted, one-person) Zeus cabin had suddenly developed an interest in linguistics.

Jason shrugged, a hint of pink creeping onto his face. "I dunno, man, I just thought it might be fun." This might have been convincing, at a stretch, but then his attention slipped and Leo followed his gaze up the hillside to where Piper and Annabeth were lying in the grass, braiding each other's hair and chattering in a blend of English, Greek, and French.

Leo grinned. "I see. The mighty Superman wants to chat up his lady _en una lengua diferente_."

Jason jerked his gaze back to his friend and immediately protested, "No! No, most of you guys know another language—Frank can speak Chinese, Hazel knows Cajun French, Annabeth can speak Ancient Greek and the French Piper's taught her, Percy can speak—well, fish and horse—"

"And Piper can speak French, and the Spanish I've taught her," Leo completed, waggling his eyebrows.

Jason made a slightly strangled noise at the back of his throat that meant he wanted to deny it but couldn't bring himself to lie.

Leo's grin widened. "Not to worry, old chap," he said as he patted his friend's obscenely wide shoulders. "I can help you impress the Piper friend. But wouldn't it be better to learn French? She's fluent and you guys could actually hold a conversation, eventually."

"My French accent made a tree catch fire once," Jason admitted, with such a rueful look at a nearby poplar that Leo made a mental note to ask about that story later.

"Well, she's not as good at Spanish, so you'll be less likely to incite wildfire, at least." Leo stroked his chin, trying to think of the best way to go about this. He hated grammar, so probably some basic phrases would be fine—oh. Oh, yes. He suppressed one of his more impish grins and snapped his suspenders against his shoulders. "Okay, how much do you know?"

"Uh, _hola_ and _adios_ and _gracias_ and _dónde está el ba__ño_."

Hehehe. Perfect. "_Bien_. If you want to ask Piper how she is, you say, _¿Como estás?_"

"_Como estás_," Jason echoed, concentration creasing his brow. "That doesn't mean, like, 'I'm stupid' or something, does it?"

"No," Leo scoffed with a wave of one hand. "It means 'how are you.' I'm personally offended."

"Oh. Okay." Jason looked slightly ashamed but mostly just relieved.

"But only say it like that to people you're close to," the repair boy warned, "or else you'll offend them. Say _como está usted_ to most people."

"Got it. What else?"

"Well," Leo said in a carefully casual tone, "if she asks you how _you_ are, 'I'm doing good today' is _tengo uno pito chiquito_."

"_Tengo un pito chiquito_," he repeated carefully.

"Yep, perfect." He ran through a few more (accurate) phrases before tossing in another mistranslation: "And 'you look nice today' is _tu madre es_—"

"What's going on here?" said a new voice, regal and female and with a touch of Spanish lilt, and Leo froze.

"Oh, hey, Reyna," Jason said with a smile. "Leo's teaching me some Spanish."

Leo turned slowly to see Reyna sweep her braid over her shoulder and plant her hands on her hips, subtly challenging. _La cagaste, la cagaste_, he told himself furiously. She was Puerto Rican, she'd notice and call him out and then he would be fed to her reputedly evil dogs—

"Like what?" she asked.

Jason cleared his throat. _"__¿Como estás?_" he asked, enunciating precisely.

His accent was overly formal, but he hadn't butchered it. Her eyebrows raised infinitesimally. "_Bien._ _¿Y como estás?"_

_"Tengo un pito chiquito,"_ he responded with the same formal exactness, and Reyna's eyebrows jumped sky-high, because she hadn't been expecting to hear her friend declare _I have a small dick_.

"What?"

Jason noticed her reaction and backtracked. "Did I say that wrong?"

Leo, angled slightly out of Jason's line of vision, began to vigorously shake his head _no_. Reyna's dark eyes bored into the son of Hephaestus, the pieces immediately falling into place. Leo waited for her to tear into him, but she was quiet.

"No," she said finally, her voice a little tighter and higher-pitched than before. "I think that's . . . a Mexican variant. You could also say _estoy bien_; it's quicker." She blinked a few times and then rubbed at something in her eye with the heel of her hand. "Sorry—pollen."

"Oh. Okay," the blond said, glancing between the two of them suspiciously, but his trust in Reyna won out over his well-earned suspicion of Leo. He gestured toward Piper and Annabeth: "So I'm okay to maybe go over there and practice?"

"Flawless," Leo commended as Reyna gave a more pragmatic, though still high-pitched, "Yes, you're fine."

Jason slid off the tabletop and trotted out of earshot, and Reyna turned the full force of her gaze onto Leo.

_"'Teaching him some Spanish,'"_ she enunciated, raising one eyebrow._"Really."_

Unable to pretend he wasn't totally proud of having pulled that off, Leo grinned at her. "Come on. If you thought it was so bad, you would have told him what he said."

Reyna blinked again and swallowed, and this time Leo was pretty sure he saw her fighting to keep a straight face. "I hardly think clarifying that_particular_ translation would have been enjoyable for any of us."

"It might make Piper feel better if we did," he considered.

She ignored this innuendo, though her cheeks darkened a little. "Did you give him any _correct_ translations, other than 'how are you'?" she asked.

"Yes!" he protested, puffing his scrawny chest out at the insult to his pride. "'I'm hungry' was right, and 'Clarisse is chasing me,' and—"

"Okay, fine. Were there any other mistranslations I should warn him about?"

Leo pretended to pout. "No. You interrupted us before I could teach him that 'you look nice today' is _tu madre es gorda y fea_." _Your mother is fat and ugly._

In surprise Reyna let out a strange hiccup snort, but she recovered quickly, pressing her knuckles to her lips as she pretended she didn't just _totally laugh_. A grin spread across his face.

"You really can't mislead him like that," she insisted. "And I don't have time to go over everything with him to make sure you don't tell him something like _tu puta madre_ means 'I love you.'"

Ooh. Good idea. She had a trickster side to her, he just knew it. He put that mistranslation away for later. "We could co-teach him Spanish," he offered.

"Right. Because I have time for that."

"Well," he reconsidered with a sideways glance, "if you don't have time for teaching, we could just practice together. I mean, _tu lengua es mi lengua, querida_."

_"No me llama 'querida,'"_ she corrected him with a sigh, for the millionth time. _"—O 'tu.'"_

But there was a pause. And that pause was enough to suggest that ten minutes of intentional misteaching had been enough to bring him one step closer to officially becoming on _tu_ terms with her.


	5. Octavian's Blunder

_Even Octavian has a weakness: seeing physical affection freaks him out. Attached to this. Set about five years after Gaea's defeat. Not meant to be taken seriously omgs_

_Note for non-Spanish speakers: _Te quiero_ and _Te amo_ both mean _I love you_, but the former is more generic and can go for friends/family, whereas the latter is more intense and you only use it for your other half, serious-romantic-love type of use._

Octavian had figured it out. Reyna was the only real obstacle to his ascent to power, and he'd figured out how to remove her—she had all but told him herself. If he had learned anything in Camp Jupiter, it was that everyone had a weakness, a mistake, a skeleton in the closet (literally, in a few cases); and outside Camp Half-Blood, on the way to war with the Greeks, she had handed hers to him. _Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano, _Rachel Elizabeth Dare had called her, hearkening back to when he'd overheard Reyna telling Jason she left that name behind when she left Puerto Rico.

Spanish. The key to finding Reyna's big secret was Spanish. Something had happened in Puerto Rico that she wanted to leave behind, and if he could find out what it was, he'd have her in the palm of his hand, the same way he had the rest of the Romans.

So Octavian collected his highest-quality tools for auguring, and he blocked off his next Saturday afternoon, saving the time for what was certain to be a most useful discovery. His gift of prophecy was a little . . . tenuous, to say the least, but it really did exist, and he was fairly certain he could channel it hard enough to get what he needed. His best teddy bears would lay down their innards for the cause, and possibly some other toys would too. He desperately needed this information. Maybe she'd made a bad deal, or left someone behind, or accidentally killed a family member (that was a popular one)—the possibilities were nearly endless.

Unfortunately, the teddy bears alone proved inadequate, and he had to seek other methods. _Aves augurales_ gave him nothing, nor did any of the typical_auspicia impenetriva_ tactics he used under duress. There was one alternative, one he hadn't tried in ages: consulting The Mirror. If he beseeched Apollo enough, it could search for scenes within a given parameter, like Spanish. He knew Reyna didn't do much Spanish at camp, so the more recent, higher concentrations of the language would be from the latter end of her time in Puerto Rico and Circe's island—the perfect time for her to make whatever mistake she'd tried to bury. Young enough to make a mistake, old enough to make it a big one.

It took some effort to wheel the giant magical object out into the open, but once he had, Octavian swept the linen cover off and let it billow to the ground as he looked at the glass contemplatively. The mirror stood tall, taller than he, with golden engravings of the sun god all around its edges. His reflection stared back at him, and the only sign that the mirror was more than that was the script across the middle: "Burn two (2) Pillow Pets' entrails for next vision." Octavian made quick work of two massive stuffed bumblebees, and as the strange-smelling smoke drifted up through the air, he beseeched Apollo for a vision of Reyna's nearest experience in high concentrations of Spanish, mostly in Latin but with the occasional "please" and "I need this so much" in English, just to be sure the message got across.

He had almost lost hope when he noticed thin grey mist trailing out from the edge of the mirror. It swirled in and around the glass in layers so that the glass was obscured, and though it gave off no sound or smell, he thought it seemed powerful, potentially dangerous, much like a thundercloud withholding its lightning. Or himself. Though, granted, it wasn't quite awe-inspiring enough for that.

The mist hovered as the mirror searched the heat map of Reyna's life for the high concentrations of Spanish from her time in Puerto Rico. Octavian was prepared to wait a while, but the mist thinned much earlier than he had expected. She must have been in Puerto Rico longer than he thought.

Sounds began to filter through the mist, and Octavian heard conversation long before he was able to see anything. He heard a voice he clearly recognized as Reyna's, and a man's, which, though it sounded vaguely familiar, he couldn't quite place. They spoke in quiet English intermingled with Spanish; the augur strained to catch a key word or phrase that might tell him what was going on.

"Are they gone?" Reyna asked.

Her male companion clicked his tongue. "Very. You ever thought about going legitimate?"

"We have a deal," she countered, and Octavian could hear metal clanking in the background. It sounded big. Maybe weapons, or armor. Reyna had been an arms dealer in Puerto Rico? Not bad for a twelve-year-old. "Are you backing out?"

"You say that like it's an option."

The mist was still swirling in the glass, but the two human forms were slowly becoming visible. Strange, Reyna had been tall for a twelve-year-old. And shouldn't her voice have been higher-pitched or something?

Then the mist cleared away, and Octavian's eyes widened: this was not twelve-year-old Reyna in Puerto Rico, this was twenty-year-old Reyna right here in Camp Jupiter; he could see the Little Tiber out in the distance through a window. But if this wasn't Puerto Rico, then what was she . . . ? And then he saw was the tan hands of the young man reaching for her, the bony shoulders, the curly hair, the _tool belt_, and shock welled in him as Leo Valdez took the illustrious praetor by the waist and tugged her toward himself with a grin.

The augur tried to make sense of the scene with his personal knowledge of Reyna—was this a deal gone bad? An arrangement the _graecus_ had overstepped? At least he would meet a quick end.

And then she reached up, tangled her fingers in Valdez's hair, and pressed her lips to his with such fervor that blood rushed to Octavian's face.

The augur averted his eyes and began to look around frantically for an off button to the vision mirror. "I don't want to see this, I don't want to see this!" he shouted at the mirror, his voice cracking as it rose in pitch. The little Apollos along the side seemed to be laughing at him. "Make it go a—No!"

Apollo's mirror was definitely laughing at him, because it conveniently missed that he was going to finish that command with _away_. Instead a little extra mist swirled around Octavian, and an instant later his ghostly vision-self was _in the room_ _with the couple_, dropping onto her discarded armor (that must have been the clanking metal from earlier) and scrambling to disappear. Apollo was losing multiple offerings for this.

Thankfully—or maybe not thankfully—Reyna and Leo didn't seem to have noticed his incorporeal entrance. In the last three seconds, Leo's hair had caught fire, though it didn't seem to be burning Reyna's hands, and she had pulled the elastic band out of her braid and pushed the repair boy backward a few steps until he'd backed against the wall.

_"Mi reina,"_ Leo laughed in mock surprise.

_"Cállate,"_ she ordered, low and breathless, running her hand along his jawline before she kissed him again.

"I don't want to be here," sang Octavian under his breath, looking pointedly at the floor, running his hands through his hair. Maybe if he tried to not be himself he would go back to being in his templum. He dove into the sofa and prayed for release.

Of course, he got no such thing. As the sofa, he just got the honor of being a part of the essence of the room when, in a bout of rebellion, Leo pulled his shirt over his head so it wouldn't catch fire and pushed back on Reyna until she bumped into the Octavian sofa. They called each other muffled names in Spanish—some of them benign insults and some of them endearments—and Octavian wished fondly that he could have heard the Spanish of vision–Puerto Rico.

But Leo broke the kiss-and-insult pattern first: _"Te amo,"_ he blurted into the crook of Reyna's neck, and her breath caught. She pulled away and looked him over; he stared at her with serious dark eyes.

Carefully she asked, _"Me quieres? Estás—?"_

_"Te amo," _he repeated, nervously aggressive.

Reyna considered this development, and coming to a decision she kissed him deliberately on the mouth. _"Te amo tambien,"_ she whispered, meeting his gaze and giving him an embarrassed smile.

His nervous boldness shifted to reveal his relief, his giddiness. "Control freak."

The shift away from intimate declarations relieved her as well. "Camp bomber," she called him before she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him back to her.

"Pleeease stop." Octavian squeezed his eyes shut at the sight of Leo's fingers working Reyna's tank top upward. Apollo hated him for sure, because he could smell the smoke drifting up from every inch of Leo's skin that Reyna touched, could feel the force of her being pressed between the sofa and the_graecus_, could hear their fingers grazing each other's skin, tracing battle scars on shoulders and arms and stomachs. The room was definitely getting warmer.

Then, suddenly, he felt nothing. He opened his eyes to find himself back in the templum, alone and PDA-free. The mist had disappeared back into the mirror, which revealed nothing except a small scripted "Burn two (2) Pillow Pets' entrails for next vision."

Octavian wasn't sure what had just happened. And Apollo's mirror could show the past, present, or future, so he wasn't even sure _when_ it happened. Turning the air conditioning on high to cool down the flush in his face, he began to clean up the templum, wide-eyed. Oh gods. Forget Reyna. She was old enough, she'd probably retire soon anyway. He'd just wait out the praetorship. It was not worth thinking of _that_. Ever again.

Someone knocked on the door from the outside, and he jumped.

"Yes?" he yelped. He turned to see Reyna let herself in, wearing a pristine braid and her full armor. He tried not to picture her like … "Can I help you?" He hoped not. He desperately hoped not.

She looked him over with an evaluating look in her eyes, confused or maybe suspicious. "Leo has been a huge help so far in putting the aerial navy together," she said eventually. "I'm going to have him stay another few weeks so we can get even further along."

Octavian felt all the blood rush to his face.

"Is there a problem with that?" she asked, that confused look coming back. "Can I remind you that the aerial navy was _your_ idea—"

"No, I know," he said, trying not to sound strangled. He had multiple problems with that, but he didn't want to plant ideas if they weren't already there, so he only said, "Make sure the repair boy doesn't get too comfortable here. He does have to go back home eventually."

"Of course." Reyna's eyebrows drew together by a fraction of an inch. She didn't act guilty so much as just put off by his odd behavior. "I'll go . . . let him know." She backed out of the templum slowly, like she didn't trust him not to go nuts if she turned her back.

Octavian watched her go and, once she'd disappeared, shuddered.

_Physical affection._


	6. Taco Bell

_A/N: in which Leo and Reyna are really close but not "dating"_

Leo was watching Netflix in his boxers when the doorbell of his guest villa rang. Most villas in Camp Jupiter didn't have doorbells, of course; he'd specially installed his own and set it up to play different intense music. This time it was the Ghostbusters theme song that blocked out the TV's audio, and he hopped up quickly so he could get rid of the visitor and get back to the show.

This plan of action fell apart as soon as he saw who the visitor was.

The door opened wide to reveal the illustrious Reyna straining to hold her dogs in check, her sleek braid falling over her shoulder as her grip tightened on their leashes. But Aurum and Argentum tugged just hard enough to make her stumble, and they jumped up on Leo, clanking against each other and barking happily.

"Hey, boys," he beamed, one hand on each head, before he looked back to their owner, who was straightening in a futile attempt to pretend she hadn't almost face-planted into the cement. "Hey, _reina_."

"Repair boy," she acknowledged, her barely civil nod contradicting the small smile that tugged at her lips. "Can we come in?"

"Sure, yeah." He stepped aside and let the trio trip into his living room, Reyna planting her feet to keep the automatons from trying to sniff everything in the room and jump up on the furniture. "What brings you to my impressive lair?"

She made a show of looking around and counting all the things that were identical to the ones in her own (legion-provided handouts and all that). "Sorry to intrude," she said finally, her gaze landing back on him—and her eyes widening as she realized just how intrusive she'd been. Leo puffed his bare chest up a little, suddenly wishing he lifted weights more often than hammers. Her eyes lingered on his abs, then his shoulders, before she blinked and stared pointedly at the ceiling. "I was walking the dogs to get some of their energy out before bed, and they wanted to say hi."

He raised one eyebrow in what he hoped was a playfully seductive way. "Don't try to pass this off on the dogs. You wanted Leo In Boxers and you know it." It would have been a new sight, minus the one time he was pretty sure she'd seen him changing into his fireproof clothes (though she denied she'd seen anything). They had been spending time together for how long now? six months? and though he thought of her very much as his girlfriend, she refused to use any dating-official terms, or any dating-official actions, like getting hot and heavy in underwear. He still wasn't totally clear on whether she felt she had higher moral standards to uphold or just wasn't interested.

"I had no idea you were mostly nude," she insisted, her cheeks darkening. Disinterested, then, probably. He tried to stop thinking about it.

"I actually did have another reason for coming," she continued, and it was stupid how his heart jumped. The dogs paused in their investigating and sat on her feet to look up at the ceiling too, probably curious what the hell was so interesting up there. "I was thinking of going into town, and I didn't know if you wanted to come with. You know, as backup."

He squinted. "Into New Rome? Why would you need backup for that?" Did she want a dogsitter?

She shook her head, and she went from looking up to looking down, smoothing her fingers over her dogs' heads. "No . . . into _town_ town. Waterville."

Waterville was a little town off the highway, outside of camp. "Can you do that? _Why_ would you do that?" Sure, he missed things like McDonald's and real delivery pizza, but it was safer inside their camps. Except for during war games and actual war and stuff, but, y'know. Win some, lose some.

Reyna's face darkened again. "I want Taco Bell," she muttered.

"What?" he blurted, taking a step toward her. Because there was no way she'd actually said what he thought she said.

"You heard me," she protested. She finally looked at him again, though she crossed her arms and carefully kept her gaze on his face. "Taco Bell."

For once, Leo's jaw hung open. No words. He'd known she liked unhealthy food, but . . .

"And I'm going as soon as I put the dogs away," she said, tilting her chin up as if to challenge him, "and you can come or not."

Finally his tongue worked again. "You're serious?"

"Very." She eyed him, her eyes as dark as his but much more intimidating. "So you coming or not?"

Leo spun on his heel, trying to remember where he'd thrown his pants and, more importantly, if they were halfway clean. "Hell yeah, I'm coming. Give me five minutes to get dressed."

"Gladly," Reyna said, laughter tightening her voice.

* * *

Fully pantsed and shirted, Leo helped Reyna put away Aurum and Argentum and then clambered into the passenger seat of her car. They bypassed the night security and sped onto the highway, the Mist giving them just enough leeway to merge on without causing a major accident. Waterville was only a five-minute drive away, not enough to make Leo's car-sickness act up, so they made it there in record time.

Reyna pulled into the Taco Bell parking lot and parked, settling back just for a second with the car still running. "This is gonna be good," she sighed, pleased with herself.

Leo elbowed her. The neon lights were wreaking havoc on his ADHD, but he still had a hard time seeing anything but her. "You know this doesn't count as real Mexican food, right?" he confirmed. "If you want the real stuff, I could make it f—"

She glanced his way with narrow eyes. "I'm well aware, thank you."

Ooh. Okay. Was it cold in here? "Okie doke, _reina_. Fake food it is. That's cool," he backtracked hastily. "Want to go in?"

She unbuckled, opened her door, and stepped gracefully onto the gravel, walking over and leaning on the trunk as he flailed in his struggle to get out of the car. Eventually he managed to get both feet on the ground and stumbled over to meet her, his embarrassment slinking away a bit when he saw she was smiling.

"Smooth moves, Romeo," she teased him.

"It'd help if I weren't trying so hard to impress Juliet," he teased her back, which made her screw up her face in a disbelieving smile. She pushed off the car, and he trotted to her side to walk into the little roadside Taco Bell.

Given that it was almost eleven o'clock at night, the place was pretty dead. One pimply guy was on his laptop behind the counter, just out of view of the security camera, if Leo was right about the angle of the lens (which, y'know, he always was). Reyna, way too regal and beautiful and altogether fab for a tacky fast food restaurant, held her chin high as she evaluated the menu. Leo caught himself staring at her—sleek hair, aquiline nose, full lips, long neck—and quickly jerked his head so that he was looking up at the glow-y menu thing.

Fake food. Right.

"I think I know what I want," she said to him, her braid thumping against her back as she turned toward him. "Are you ready?"

_So_ ready, but not for mass-produced tacos. "Um, yeah," he blurted, and they stepped toward the counter. The pimply guy glanced up from his laptop, did a double take, and then scrambled to the cash register. Leo understood exactly where he was coming from.

"Hi, hello," the worker said, smiling too widely at Reyna. Leo stepped a little closer to her and rose up on his toes a little. "What can I get for you?"

"I'll have two of the 89-cent soft tacos, a cup of pintos and beans, and a small fountain drink," Reyna said. The words sounded strange coming from her. Fast food, huh. "And whatever this one wants."

Leo started. "I have my wallet, I can pay—"

"You can pay next time. I've got it." She gave him a _no arguing with the praetor_ look.

He didn't argue with the praetor.

"So what do you want?" she asked patiently, gesturing at the worker who looked less than pleased that he had to be around for this.

"Um . . ." Trying to focus, Leo glanced up at the menu. "Uh, I'll have . . . the same, I guess."

The guy behind the counter immediately looked back to Reyna, his hips pressing against the edge of the very fake marble. "Anything else?" he asked, one eyebrow raising in a way that made Leo extremely unhappy. Raising eyebrows at Reyna was _his_ thing, and this random guy was trying to beat him at it. He tapped _screw off_ in Morse code on the counter, to little effect, sadly.

Pimple Guy rung up the total, accepted Reyna's 10-dollar bill, counted out the change, and poured it into her outstretched hand, his fingers lingering on her palms. Looking distinctly uncomfortable, she closed her fingers around the coins and stepped away, backing (as it happened) right into Leo's hand. The worker looked between them and muttered, "I'll have that for you in a minute," before he disappeared into the back.

"Shame he doesn't know Morse," Reyna said in an undertone as she turned to face Leo, who laughed.

"All the _cool_ people know it." He was currently in the process of teaching it to her, and it bode well for her learning that she had picked up on his countertop message. He reached out for the two small stacked cups and handed one to her. "Just like all the cool people drink Mountain Dew."

She elbowed him, rolling her eyes. "Don't. It's almost eleven, you'll never be able to sleep."

"What if I wasn't planning on sleeping?" he countered, but it wasn't until her brows jumped that he realized how, ahem, suggestive that sounded. He held up his hands and stumbled backward for the soda machine: "I mean, Netflix, there's like movies and stuff and tomorrow's Sunday so I can sleep in and—"

"Mm-_hmm_," she hummed, raising one eyebrow and giving him a smoldering sideways glance. Instinctively he sucked in his stomach. Unfair. That expression was . . . too much for a young adult male to handle in an empty Taco Bell at night. He wondered if she felt this way when he made the same face, then immediately dismissed the idea.

Desperate for a distraction, he all but shoved his cup under the Baja Blast dispenser, trying to collect himself as he watched the perfect blue drink sizzle up to the top. As he moved over to slap a lid on, he glanced over his shoulder to ask her, "You want to eat here or go back to camp?"

"Mmm, better take it to go," she said, but she seemed a little disappointed to have to do so. "Don't want to attract any monsters."

"Mmm," he echoed noncommittally, bumping his butt against the counter as she filled up her cup with caffeine-free Diet Pepsi—and then stopping in surprise as she looked at the soda and dumped it out.

And then, to his utter surprise, she moved her hand one lever over to rinse out the cup with water and then fill it back up with none other than Baja Blast Mountain Dew.

"You sure you wanna do that?" he asked carefully.

She looked him in the eye and pressed a lid over the top of her cup. "If you're not going to sleep," she shrugged, casual but somehow very much _not_, "then I'll promote Octavian to praetor before I let you not-go-to-sleep with someone else."

_What?_

"Your order," the worker called sullenly, but Leo was too busy inspecting the expression on Reyna's face. Because there was no way in Hades she meant . . .

Reyna tilted her chin up and to the side, giving him that sideways look again, with a little smile curling at her lips. Her eyebrows rose, and without breaking their held gaze, she reached back and picked up their bag of fake food.

"I have what you want," she said archly, and even with the bag in her hand, it didn't take a social genius (thank the gods) to realize she wasn't talking about tacos.

"Wait," he stammered, all his fake flirting deserting him. "So that's what you want too?"

She smiled at him softly. "We want exactly the same thing," she said.

"Oh." Leo's eyes widened as he suddenly realized that he really, really liked Taco Bell.


	7. Settling

_A/N: Quasi-smut set in a real-world college AU in which Reyna and Jason share an apartment and Leo plays with lighters instead of having pyrokinetics. (__I actually wrote this for "Obviously" and then decided to go a different direction.) __Contains profanity and semismut._

Reyna thought it was a little warm—had Jason turned up the heat while they were out? Because there was no way she was getting hot and bothered over Leo just because his hair was a mess and he'd put on dress clothes and a tie for once and his button-down shirt pulled at his fucking perfect shoulder just tight enough—

Shit. She was hot and bothered. And when Leo looked over and saw her staring, he gave her a nervous smile and reached into his chest pocket to pull out that lighter. He flicked it on, off, on, off, the flame flickering in and out of existence as fast as lightning, his thumb sometimes slipping on the catch. When his eyes met hers, it slipped.

Reyna propped herself up on her elbows and then leaned into a vertical sitting position, just long enough to reach forward and slip the lighter out of his hands.

"_Rei_—" he started, and then she very deliberately dropped the off lighter onto the carpet. And she dragged her hands through his hair, down his neck, over his shoulders, down his chest along the line of buttons, buttons she began to unclasp as she tugged him closer to herself.

"Um?" he squeaked when her lips touched the side of his jaw. She breathed out long, slow, warm, ticklish if the way his breathing hitched was any indication.

Her fingers continued to work their way nimbly down the front of his shirt. She pressed a kiss under her ear— "you" —under his jaw— "look" —on his neck— "_perfecto_."

"Perf—? _Oh_," he groaned, apparently okay with her sucking on the side of his neck. Thank god, the last button. She slid her hands up to his shoulders, hooked her thumbs inside his button-down, and pulled the shirt over his shoulders, relishing the soft crinkle as it hit the floor.

She fisted her hands in his undershirt and pulled him closer, wishing she could feel his chest pressing against hers. She could feel the heat of his skin, hotter than normal, but he didn't seem to be responding, much less initiating or even countering touches. Was something wrong?

Oh, no. Shit shit shit. She'd misread it; she'd been too forward. Reyna released Leo and scooted backward, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear to mask the embarrassed blush rising in her face. She searched his face for hesitancy, embarrassment, even disgust—but found only wide eyes where he looked her over.

She drew in a breath, however lust-ridden and shaky it might have been. "If I did something wrong," she started, but he shook his head no.

He was quiet for a moment, and then quietly he asked, "You . . . you're interested?" His big, dark eyes flicked up to meet hers, brows drawing together. It took her a second to realize he was being serious. All his false bravado was long melted away.

"Of course I'm interested."

"In _me_?"

She almost laughed, raking her hand through her hair. "God. Yes, Leo, in _you_. I think the attempted undressing was pretty good evidence—"

"I don't want you to settle," he said forcefully, almost angrily.

This gave Reyna pause. "Who said anything about me settling?"

"I'm not _stupid_, you're the most beautiful girl I've ever met, and you could have any guy you wanted at this school," Leo insisted, looking at his hands instead of at her. "And I love that you're spending time with me, I wouldn't trade it for anything, but you don't have to—"

A giggle choked up through her throat, and before she could stop she was laughing, though the sound was muffled by her hand over her mouth.

He looked offended. "I wasn't trying to be funny."

She tried to sober up. "No, I know. It's just, you make it sound like I made you a charity case or something, when in reality I was thinking _you_ deserved better."

This, it seemed, totally threw him off. "Me?"

"Yeah. You're funny and talented and you manage to keep your head up even when life's shit, and you make people happy—at least, you make _me_ happy, and Piper and Jason." She shook her head. "I can barely manage to hold onto the two friends I have. I'm a mess." She looked at her hands: "You haven't made overtures in weeks, and I practically assaulted you just now. You didn't ask for that. I'm sorry. Shit. _I'm_ settling? _You'd_ be settling."

"_¿En serio?"_ he asked, and when she looked up he was leaning toward her, his concerned gaze boring into her. "I would never in a million years have even dreamed of you."

"'Cause I'm a boring jackass," she prompted, a half-joking smile twisting her expression.

"Hey," he warned. "No bad-mouthing yourself. I happen to like that person a lot."

"Do you now?" She bit her lip and, without realizing it, let her gaze trail along his face, lingering at the mouth.

And then he was leaning in, and when his fingertips touched the side of her face, her eyelids fluttered shut just before she felt the pressure of his mouth on hers for the first time, soft and tentative. Heat rose in her cheeks and her stomach; she gasped and reached out again to tangle her fingers in his hair, his perfect hair.

"'S okay?" he mumbled, and she could barely manage the breathy "uh-huh" that made his hands wander. And after that, well. Jason wouldn't be back until tomorrow.


	8. Supernatural

_A/N: Ghost AU. Set in an AU where Reyna and Leo never met at all._

Reyna had never been one to believe in ghosts, or the supernatural in general (the Greco-Roman pantheon didn't count). But gods damn it, if whatever was causing her all this trouble didn't leave soon, she was going to kill it again.

Aurum had clambered onto the top of the couch and was howling— loudly— at the invisible chains that were clanking around the living room ceiling. His silver brother, on the other hand, was standing guard at the door, barking angrily every time a doorbell rang. (She didn't have a doorbell.)

And even outside of bothering the dogs, the whatever-it-was was just inconveniencing the Pluto out of her. She'd come home from a long day in the Senate and find her fridge reorganized, the TV running a telenovela marathon, or the lights flickering on and off in Morse code pickup lines.

The day she came in to new light bulbs installed in all her lamps, she said out loud, "You know I can do that myself, thank you!" She hated being underestimated.

After that, she began to notice even more household chores being done while she was out, or sometimes while she was in and just resting. Rewired electronics, replaced batteries, all sorts of mechanical help that, if she were being honest, she would probably have taken months to get around to. So she stopped complaining out loud and instead just took to sighing loudly, rolling her eyes. Sometimes she thought the rustling of the leaves in the trees sounded like laughter.

Despite her adamant disbelief in the supernatural, Reyna was embarrassed to realize she didn't entirely mind this one discrepancy. Not that she would ever admit it, if anyone found out. But, to be polite, she left a cup of hot chocolate on the counter (who knew if ghosts could choose to drink?) and wrote a note next to the mug: _Who are you?_ it said in her flawless cursive.

When she came back, the mug was empty, and beside it, her Latin dictionary lay open, with her note set right under the entry for _leo_.

Leo it was, then.

In the winter, when even California got cold and she hated it, she was always hesitant to turn up the heat any more than she had to. Why waste the money and energy, right? But somehow by the time she got home from work every day, the heating system was already at the perfect temperature, nice and toasty, and the electric blanket was laid out on the sofa.

She sighed every time, pleased and not so loud, and her lips curved in a gentle smile. The lamp on the coffee table blinked -.— —- ..- .—. .-. . / .— . .-.. -.-. —- — ., Morse code for _You're welcome._

It was strange, having a friend who was invisible and intangible and inaudible outside of his messing with her electronics, but Reyna grew to enjoy Leo's company. Though co-praetors came and went, she could always depend on the ghost whose presence made her villa a little warmer (and a little smellier, like campfire and engine oil or something). She'd curl up on her couch with the electric blanket, turn on a telenovela, and laugh every time the lamp flickered Morse commentary. Or she'd bake cookies for herself and turn around to get a puff of flour in the face, making her choke on her laughter as she tried to wipe it all off and inevitably miss some of it in her hair. Luckily he never seemed to care.

But she didn't realize how attached she had gotten until the day she came home and didn't see him. The villa was extra warm, as usual, but no lights were flickering, no rustling leaves were laughing, and the dogs were quiet. She kicked off her shoes and walked slowly to the kitchen for a bowl of ice cream, wondering if he might be planning a prank.

He wasn't planning a prank. Once she'd gotten her ice cream and sat down on the couch, she felt the electric blanket turn on, and the faint smell of campfire seeped into the air. Relaxed now that he was here, she leaned back into the armrest and began to talk to the air about her day.

When she quieted, she expected him to make a joke, but instead he was quiet too. Not gone, but inactive. Almost like he was thinking. And then all the lights began to flicker in unison:

.. / .-.. —- …- . / -.— —- ..-

_I love you._

She held her breath and looked at her knees, blinking quickly in the hopes she wouldn't start to cry. Because what kind of lonely idiot fell in love with a ghost?


	9. Have You Ever Considered Piracy?

_Pirate AU. Reyna is a hottie bugatti and would make a fab pirate, we all know it._

As captain of the _Legion_ and most feared pirate of the seven seas, Reyna had no problem with sea legs. Only amateurs tripped over themselves aboard a ship. So when the _Legion_ lurched to the side and she slammed against the wall of her cabin, she knew something was wrong.

"What was that?" yelped a cabin boy clambering to his feet, but she only raced past him, her boot heels pounding up the stairs to the main deck. She found her best crewmen trying to patch up a hole that had just been burned into her perfect foremast. She immediately leaned out over the edge, shouting to her first mate and pilot, Jason Grace (a former noble who, as it happened, made a _marvelous_ pirate), to wheel them around. She would drop dead before she let an unprovoked attack go unpunished.

Strangely, though, she didn't see any ships nearby. At least not any that posed a threat. There was a moderately large sailing boat, with only one figure on deck, but it didn't look like it . . . _wait_. She squinted. The warped planks on the side of the littler boat- they weren't from mistreatment. They appeared in a regular pattern, the pattern not unlike that of her own cannons.

Some ingenious bastard had disguised a miniature warship as a fishing boat.

"Get me on that boat five minutes ago!" she shouted to her crewmen, pointing one finger straight at the fishing boat. "We are taking them for everything they're worth, now let's _move_!" No one shot at her ship and got away with it.

Moving as soon as she ordered it, her people were at the edge of the ship with swords and grappling hooks, knees bent and at the ready as soon as Jason got them near enough. Below deck, her cannons cranked out into place, aimed right at the enemy.

Jason swung them just close enough.

"Go!" Reyna shouted, swinging her arm toward the other ship, two fingers extended, and her crewmen went. Within moments they had overrun the fishing boat, overcoming the single sailor on deck and scouring the rest of the ship to ensure there was no one else aboard. After they dragged up a struggling girl and no others, Reyna tossed her own hook and swung gracefully over, landing with both feet on the other deck.

"Found?" she asked Frank, a young but trustworthy recruit.

Ever respectful, he dipped his head. (She liked him.) "Just the two of these on board, captain. There's a safe in a cabin below deck that Nico's cracking right now. Hazel said she felt jewels inside, the good stuff."

The Levesque girl was young too, even younger than Frank, but she had an impeccable sixth sense for treasure. "Good. We'll take that with us." Satisfied, she turned slowly on her heel and crouched down on eye level with the two enemy sailors, a Latino boy and a Native American girl, neither of whom seemed like seaworthy professionals. So why had they shot at her?

"Name," she said, drawing a knife out of her right boot and leveling the gold blade at the boy's throat. He was visibly more nervous than the girl- sweating and shaking- and he would be easier to crack.

The girl spoke, though. She spoke confidently and smoothly, probably an orator or some sort. Untrustworthy. "You're the bane of any respectable sailor, you can't order us-"

Reyna's gaze flicked toward her crewmen, and one stepped forward and slapped the girl across the face, effectively silencing her. "You will address the captain with respect," he ordered, his voice rough as gravel and deadly serious.

The girl clenched her jaw, but she went silent. Reyna returned her attention to the increasingly agitated boy, pressing the tip of the blade into his neck. "Name," she repeated.

"Leo Valdez, but it was an accident, I swear," he burst out. "I was just doing some checkups, and my cannon just went off-"

Maybe it was an accident, maybe it wasn't. She spoke over him. "Leo Valdez, I do not like being shot at. Do you know who I am?"

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "Um . . . is there a wrong answer?"

"I'm simply curious," she said smoothly. Indeed there was no wrong answer, as that would imply that a right answer would change his fate.

"Uh, well, you have a really nice brigantine there," he stalled. "Plenty of weaponry installed, looks like. Lots of space. Good upkeep, but just plain enough to pass unnoticed if you had to."

Reyna raised one eyebrow.

"Based on that, and on the scariness of you and your crew, I'd guess you're a pirate," Leo finished. "They gives me the freaky-deakies, by the way."

"They are meant to. Now, _which_ pirate am I?"

He looked her in the face for the first time, really looked, and suddenly he turned an alarming shade of red. "The prettiest one?" he offered, his face twisting up in a grin.

The girl kneeling beside him groaned audibly.

Reyna pursed her lips and instead turned to that girl. She kept her blade exactly where it was, though; she suspected this one would be more concerned for her friend than for herself. "Name," she asked, crisp and unassuming.

The girl scowled at her, the beads and feathers in her choppy hair swinging lightly in the breeze. "Piper."

"Piper what?"

A moment's hesitation: "Aphrodite."

Reyna pressed her blade into Leo's neck; he gasped, and scarlet stained the tip of her knife.

"It's McLean," Piper blurted, scooting forward and then being summarily yanked backward by a Legionnaire. "Piper McLean."

Of the McLeans. Well, then. This little adventure just became potentially profitable. "And do you know who I am, Piper McLean?"

Her scowl graduated into a glare. "The pirate queen. Reyna."

"Very good." She glanced back at Leo, who had suddenly blanched. An interesting color change. "Now, here is what's going to happen. Your ship is mine. You are both mine. I will let you live because, for now, I think you can both be of use to me alive. Give me any reason to think otherwise, and I promise to kill you."

Leo choked. Piper's eyes darted to him, on instinct it seemed, for a second before her gaze returned to Reyna and hardened.

The captain sheathed her knife and straightened to her full height. "Frank, Hazel, Gwen, and Nico can stay and follow in this boat. The rest of you, bring the prisoners and any valuables back onto the _Legion_. We're going to take a little detour."

As her strongest crewmates wrangled the two struggling sailors, Reyna swept back onto the main deck of her ship, where she met Jason at the wheel.

"What's going on?" he asked in an undertone, looking past her at the returning crew.

"Change our course from San Juan to Charleston," she instructed him. "One of our assailants is worth quite a bit of gold."

His eyebrows drew together. "You're bringing over two people, Reyna."

She held her chin high. "The girl's companion is going to double as her incentive to behave and, potentially, as my repair boy. Assuming I let him live that long."

Jason looked at her, and she met his gaze straight on. He was not comfortable with kidnapping, and she knew it, but she had seen the reward poster for returning the governor's daughter, and that many zeroes held her to her plan. He saw the resolve in her eyes (when was it ever gone?), and finally he dipped his head in respect. "Aye, aye, captain," he said.

Enjoying the feeling of the sea breeze on her face and the glint of gold in her mind, Reyna nodded back at him and stepped lithely down the stairs to see to the prisoners, each of whom had two pirates guarding them. She looked them over with her hands clasped behind her back and her legs apart, cocking her head.

"Put Miss McLean in the holding cell, with two female guards," she decided.

As Gwen and Clarisse forced Piper toward the stairs to go below deck, Reyna looked over the second new acquisition. He was only as tall as she and apparently had trouble maintaining his cannons, but she didn't fail to notice the strength in his shoulders and arms. She suspected he was a former blacksmith, and that implied certain skills.

"Mister Valdez," she considered, letting his name roll around in her mouth a bit. "You, I think, can start your work in my custody. Dakota, Beckendorf, bring him to my cabin."

Leo's face promptly went bright red again. "Well," he grinned, "I guess when they say _you're looking for the booty_—"

"I have a good compass that came into my possession broken," she said sharply. "If you can fix it, we will move on to bigger and better things. Rest assured I have no ulterior motives on you." Her nose wrinkled a little at the thought. To seduce someone who had fired on the _Legion_? Unthinkable. And he didn't have half the grace and good looks that her first mate did.

Yet, as she walked alongside him and his guards, she had to admit that it would be best to have him off the ship soon. Those arms would likely prove distracting.


	10. Morning After

_The prompt was "an awkward after-sex conversation." Hahaha. Appropriate warnings apply._

Dressed only in her biggest button-down blouse and black panties, Reyna sat at the kitchen table, legs crossed at the ankles, sipping a mug of caffeinated hot chocolate, when a very disheveled Leo dragged himself through her bedroom door. Very disheveled . . . and very naked.

"Morning," she said stiffly, keeping her eyes on her drink.

He looked up in the middle of ruffling his hair and froze. His free hand slowly moved to cover his crotch. "Uh, good morning, your praetorship."

She cleared her throat. "Sleep okay?"

"Once I . . . uh . . . got to sleep," he said, his grin crooked but nervous.

Ugh. Closing her eyes, she _hmm_ed noncommittally and shifted so that her back was just slightly more toward him.

Going quiet, he shuffled past her and, with the hand that wasn't covering his manhood, began to open and close different cabinet doors.

"Looking for something?" she asked, following it up with a suggestion: "Clothes, perhaps?"

He laughed, though it was more like a choking cough. "Uh, I'm pretty sure I know where those are. Though to be honest, I don't quite remember how exactly my pants got on top of the dog cage."

She did. "Cereal is the third door from the left. Bowls are the next one over."

"I know that. And you _know_ I don't like cereal," said Leo.

Reyna took another sip of hot chocolate. "Then take your misplaced clothes and leave. I certainly didn't ask you to have breakfast with me."

He made a noise at the back of his throat that reminded her of her dogs whining. Now in her peripheral vision, she could see the lean muscles work in his back as he went through the cabinets, presumably looking for some sort of sustenance that wasn't cereal. She forced herself to look at her hands, her mug, her knees, anything else but him.

"I don't usually bother with breakfast," he said eventually, glancing her way. "All the ladies love a bad boy, you know. And bad boys don't stick around for breakfast."

"The ladies must not love you much, not if you're stuck coming to see me on a Friday night," she said, raising one eyebrow and cocking her head without looking away from her mug. Their arrangement, granted, was a little touch-and-go—unenthusiastic friends with enthusiastic benefits. But usually he was out on the weekends, chatting up the demigoddesses who'd suddenly found him hilarious after he saved the world and sprouted a few extra inches.

He waved this off. "Nahhhh, they do love me. I practically have to beat the girls off with a bat."

She noticed he didn't argue her use of the word _stuck_. "Well, then, better not to keep them waiting. Get dressed and greet the day. Or hang out naked in my kitchen, greet no one, and be stuck with me for another night." She pressed her lips together in a grimace.

Leo hesitated, and though she refused to look back at him, she could feel his eyes on her. "You're not . . . ?"

"Upset at you leaving?" she suggested. "No, not at all."

"I mean, it wasn't bad," he said. "Us, last night. It wasn't bad. Right?"

Then Reyna looked at the shirtless young man, and suddenly she was overwhelmed by the memory of him under her, then on top of her, his lips on her neck and his hands between her legs, all but electrocuting her body with an impossibly satisfying touch. His husky low Spanish, his grip on her wrists, the way he shuddered when she played with his hair. She remembered arching into him, pressing against him, lifting herself off the bed. Wanting, no, _needing_ him. And getting him, in the very best way.

"No," she agreed, clenching her stomach against the flame flickering there. "It wasn't bad."

What would have been bad? Admitting she wanted to stop sharing him.


	11. Moving In

_The prompt was Leyna moving in together. This turned kinda sketchy, fair warning. Sorry._

Reyna held the door open as Leo waddled into her villa, a big box of junk blocking his view of anything. Funny, he'd taken her up on the offer of moving in as soon as she'd mentioned it, but the actual process was taking him a lot longer. "Just a little further," she directed him, "two steps— good, stop there, or you'll run into the counter."

He leaned over backward to give her a mock-irritated look. "Remind me again why _you_ can't move in with _me_?" he asked for the fifteenth time. He dropped the box with a resounding thud onto the kitchen floor, making all the machine bits inside jangle against each other. "I would've loved to see you cart _your_ every possession into the Argo II."

He stretched and straightened, and he sauntered back to the door, but instead of going down the hall for his next trip, he leaned against the door frame beside her. She patted him on the arm. "So naive. That's what I love about you."

He bristled. "Naive?"

"Oh, yes." She cocked her head and smiled at him, her eyes scrunching up. She knew quite well that she had the repair boy wrapped around her finger. "Even if you _could_ convince me to move into your traveling workshop, I think we both know you would still be the one carting everything around."

"No way," he argued. "You're a big praetor, you can move your own stuff."

Putting up a front. She raised both eyebrows. "Really? Are you certain?"

"Yeah," he bluffed.

She looked down at her braid falling over her shoulder and stroked the sleek hair, a sneaky and unpraetorly plan forming in her mind. "I couldn't convince you to help me?"

He hesitated. "No," he said after a beat.

"Hmm." Her fingers nimbly tugged the elastic off the end of her braid, and she ran her fingers through her hair, loosening the curls. "So you're saying…" She took a step toward him. "…that even if I tried…" She tilted her chin up. "…I couldn't convince you?"

He met her eyes, black on black, and he swallowed loudly. "Um… yeah?"

"Hmm," she repeated, cocking her head and looking at his lips, breathing out audibly through her own. "You know, I think I would challenge that."

"Dare you," he blurted.

The corners of her lips curved upward in a mischievous smile.

So Reyna shifted toward Leo, leaving barely an inch of electric hot space between them. She could feel his breath on her cheek, and her fingers itched for him. But she held back, for now.

"Admit I'm right," she breathed.

Playfulness glinted in Leo's eyes. "No," he said.

Ah, let the games begin. She slid her arms around his neck, pressed her face into his wild curls. "I am."

She could feel his pulse rising through his shirt, and she could smell smoke, but he insisted, "_I_ am."

She couldn't decide whether he was stupid or very, very smart, but she wasn't going to lose either way. Her mouth grazed past his ear, his jaw, landed on his mouth. "Mm, mm," she mumbled. "Me."

"Me."

And then Reyna pressed him into the counter, the full force of her. She hadn't meant to move her hands but she found them tangled in his hair, tugging his head into hers as she kissed him, hard. He was definitely smoking now, and her own heartbeat was pounding in her neck, her stomach. "Me," she hummed, until his tongue tickled hers and cut the word off.

His long fingers gripped her at the waist, tugging her shirt up, pulling her even closer to him. "Just admit defeat," he suggested.

She pulled her mouth away from his to grin at him. "Not a chance."

"Is this what living with you's gonna be like? Fighting all the time?"

"This isn't fighting," she said with a smirk. "I haven't even pulled out the big guns yet."

"Ooh, there's big guns?" he teased. "You should have told me."

She shoved him playfully against the counter, pushing him partially up onto it. "I'm telling you now. And trust me, they're quite fearsome."

He grinned back down at her, one knee drawing a slow line up her leg to her hip. "The queen is saying things, but I think she's lying. I'm personally offended."

"You should be personally offended because _I'm right_," she insisted, rising up to kiss him again, one hand sliding up his chest. She rested her lips against his cheek: "And I'm always right. You should remember that."

"IIIII don't think so," he sang, ever impertinent. "You would carry your own stuff."

"Oh!" Pretending to be shocked, she raised her eyebrows and leaned away. "You know, I think you _are_ right."

"See?" He grinned. "Thank y—"

"I could never convince you to do anything you didn't want to do," she agreed, pushing his knee off her hip and detaching herself from him quickly. She backed away and swept her hair back like she was going to put it back in a braid. "You know what, let me go get the next box. Where'd you drop your stuff?"

"Really?" he said, his tone dropping a little, his hands closing around the space she had just occupied. "Uh— okay."

"Mm-hmm," she said. "I'll just go." She jerked one thumb toward the door. "And it'll probably be a while, so you might want to settle down, you know, rest your aching feet."

"How long's a while?" he asked, in almost a whine.

"A loooong while," she said. "Maybe half an hour per box. I'm a slow walker. Hope that's okay."

Leo slipped off the counter with a soft thump. "You sure you don't want any help?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Nooo, nooo. You sit down on the couch and rest, your poor overworked thing. Let me handle all the rest of the move-in."

His expression dropped. "All of it?"

"Oh, yeah. I probably won't finish til late tonight. You might want to start a movie and dinner for yourself, 'cause you won't see me at all before breakfast tomorrow." Reyna raised her eyebrows and shrugged in her most innocent sad expression, as if to say _it can't be helped._

Leo considered this; she could practically hear the gears turning in his head. "You know," he said finally, trotting to her side and reaching for her, "I think I could help after all. This one time."

"Really?" She feigned surprise. "Don't go out of your way or anything—"

He tugged at her waist, pulled her towards himself. "No, really," he insisted, leading them both backward toward the couch, "I can help. But first—"

They fell backward onto the couch. Reyna accidentally landed with her elbow in his gut, and he grunted. She laughed and apologized in an undertone, adjusting her legs on either side of him, kissing him on the mouth even more fiercely than before. Her hands clenched in his shirt and his hair. He groaned at the back of his throat.

"I hope you know this proves I was right," she whispered, laughing as she pressed her mouth to his again.


End file.
